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Topic: Bookstores (Read 349 times)

These are INCREDIBLE!!! This is why I will never give up hope that Amazon and all these online bookstores will start to come back to Earth and allow customers to once again, feel the need to get out of their houses and venture down to their local bookstore. Yes, it would be nice to have one of these in my neck of the woods for sure. But all bookstores offer something you can't get online: Human interaction and amazing architecture.

The closet thing we have to something like this is Point Loma's Bookstar. Rather than tear down the Point Loma Movie Theater, a place where I saw such classics as E.T., Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies (which by the way was the last movie I saw there). They kept the interior and exterior of the building pretty much intact with all the ornate designs on the ceiling. But it's still nowhere near those in the Top 20. Not even close.

literally drove past that place this morning. My kids Karate class is about 5 blocks down from there....in that Naval base they converted into a shopping mall thing...I don't even remember what they call it.

still really cool because all the old buildings are intact...the building her class is in...is this killer old 2 story naval office.

So, I just drove over to Point Loma Bookstar today. Its been at least 5 years since I last walked inside. It seems different, but the same. I guess it's just been so damn long that I kinda felt out of place....and yet it felt like home away from home. My main objective to going there was to grab the latest issue of Playboy with Raquel Pomplun as the new Playmate of the Year. Naturally I grabbed the remaining copies. Then I headed over to Borders. I knew they went belly up a while back, but I figured that there would be a replacement bookstore. Nope. It's now Trader Joe's.

Ack!

So, I went over to see if Barnes and Noble was still around, which is a few blocks north of 'Borders'. They are still around. Grabbed the last copy of the Playboy issue they had on the rack. I feel like I have been driving all day today, which is something that I just don't do with regularity anymore. I hate driving. I'm glad that Bookstar is still around. It's nice knowing it's there when I need it.

We had one of those Bookstar things in Nashville, it was pretty sweet but they went out of business around the turn of the new century and they never replaced it with anything. Really sucks. I miss going to the big chain bookstores (I do have a Books-A-Million that I like, but I miss Borders and Davis Kidd, which had an INSANE magazine section, I always plopped down bills there), and the used bookstore is SO far out of the way I only go there once a year now.

And I don't think I ever had the gall to buy a Playboy. I wanted to find an old one at the comic book store and felt too self-conciouss.

Just shows how old I am. Although I'm sure it's more of how long I would be there looking through all the back issues than actually holding an issue (which I could slip between some NORMAL comics, which I'm sure are just as dirty in this day and age). Plus I probably have all the pictures I was looking for anyway, just wanted some higher-res ones with the mag.

The last comic-con I went to I actually met a really cool old man who was a Playboy cartoonist, I bought a book of his stuff, I feel like a Mad Men guy with that thing. I also have Serpieri books on my bookshelf, but I doubt anyone in my fam would ever pick one of those up. So it's a very strange contradiction I got going on.

I hate not having a local bookstore. The library is fine for what it is. It's just not the same as going to a legit bookstore with magazines from other countries and whatnot. So, I have to drive over to Bookstar for that fix and getting there isn't always worth the time and effort. My life would be so much simpler if they just opened a f*cking bookstore down the block.

The last 'legit' bookstore we had here was Crown Books. It was in one location for a long time and then it actually moved a few blocks east, closer to my house where it stayed in business for a nice long run before finally closing. That was something like well over 15-20 years ago. Since then.....nothing.

So, I hit Bookstar this past week. TWICE in 3 days!!! I came back to this thread to see exactly when the last time I was there and was shocked to see that it has been almost a year to the day since my last Splurge.

I forgot to mention that I did hit Warwick's Bookstore over in La Jolla a few weeks ago when I was picking up my copies of Paul Stanley's A Life Exposed. The book store is right smack in the heart of 'Snobville'. It's for the elite that like to flaunt their weatlh. Just think of Rodeo Drive for San Diego. Anyway, Warrick's is a really nice book store....but it's tiny as f*ck. And for something that wants to pride itself on having a wide selection, they didn't have anything that I was interested in checking out on that particular day (besides Paul's book that is).

I'm sooooooo down for this. I don't care if the books are overpriced or not. Well, I do, but you get what I mean by this. Given how so many of the bookstores have closed locally (there are only 2 left within driving distance) and those are still too far for me to go to on a regular basis. So, yeah I want to see one of these stores open up near my house!!!! I miss the days of just being able to walk down to a bookstore and browsing, reading and ultimately buying whatever has my attention at that moment. Those days are long gone. I really want to see this come back in a big way. The last Big Chain Book Store (Crown Books) we had here, which was a 5 minute walk to and from, disappeared 20 years ago. Sigh.

I have... well, I have Parnassus, which is the locally-owned one that Ann Patchett founded but it's limited selection, small... it's nice but I never FIND anything there, you know? So it's that and Books-A-Million, which I do like and usually pick up stuff, but I miss the options. I miss Davis-Kidd like a mother because that was TWO huge stories of books and the biggest magazine section I'd ever seen, and we used to have Borders which was also pretty good. But I miss having the OPTIONS. Those stores were different enough, somehow, and far apart that if you wanted to go to a bookstore, you could go to one and be subjected to a different selection.